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Monday, March 18, 2013

How hard are you willing to work for your goals?

When you start on a weight loss journey you need to create a blueprint of your plan. When you decide that success is your only option, you will find a way to achieve it! But remember success is never a straight line, it's a squiggly one because everyone has bumps along the way to reach their finish line so don't be discouraged by plateaus and setbacks. If you read the story of any famous actress or singer, no one got where they are overnight, it was a difficult path that took a lot of work. Likewise your weight loss is going to be the result of you changing to a healthy lifestyle, and that takes patience to see the results of your hard work.You deserve to achieve your goals! So you need to remove the mindset of being a quitter and turn off that negative voice in your head that says you will always be where you are now.

If you set up a plan, and visualize your success, you will reach it! Not overnight, but baby steps to change your relationship with food and fitness to create the foundation for your plan. Here are the first steps I suggest you start with:

order a heart rate monitor so you know how many calories you burn daily, you will need that info to enter at myfitnesspal because the more you burn the more you get to eat

go out and walk everyday for an hour during your lunch break, then come back to your desk and eat the healthy lunch you brought from home (I do this)

get off the bus/subway a few stops earlier so you have to walk a bit to work/home

calculate your body fat percentage, most gyms have the equipment to tell you

take before pictures and your measurements so you can track yourself by not just the scale

decide on a fitness routine and create a calendar of your weekly routine

buy new sneakers if yours are more than a year old

If you want lasting results you can't just think of it as a diet, but a complete lifestyle change in the way you eat. I want you to re-engineer your brain to create a new lifestyle to attain your goals. Keeping a to-do list will help you stay focused on those goals, the steps you need to take them, and give you a sense of accomplishment when you check them off. Calm organized people stay disciplined by keeping a to-do list, and you can too by keeping it handy on your phone so you can look at it daily. I've been keeping to do lists for as long as I can remember, it's what keeps me organized and focused on my goals both work related and personal. If you have an iphone or ipad download the awesome note app, it's the highest rated personal organization app.

It comes with a calendar synced to google and to do lists that you can organize by category and customize the colors or even have a cheetah print folder if that suits your fancy! So you can start your list with the items you need for success from the list above. I also keep a running list of food items I run out of, so that the next time I go to the grocery store I know I'm out of x,y,z. If I happen to be at the grocery store without my list I'm lost and don't get what I need. Having a list is the best tool to keep your goals in mind. The app comes with alarms you can set to go off before an event and those alarms have a range of ringtones so you don't confuse it with anything else.

For instance you can set an alarm at the time you're supposed to workout at home; to do a 10 min cleaning challenge on your lazy Sunday; to remind you to respond to your friends emails; or to go off one year from today to ask you how you're doing and if you've achieved your goals. Because if you're in the same place this time next year that's a problem. Another use for it is if you're always late to meet people instead of thinking about what time you have to be somewhere, think about what is the latest time you have to be out your door instead. I have two alarms on my phone for 8am and 10pm. The 8am is my must be out my door now alarm so I'm never more than 5 minutes late to work. The 10pm is my bedtime so I can get up easily in the morning, that discipline comes really handy when I need to workout in the morning before work. I'm not a morning person, but I found that if I go to bed early, it's not a problem getting up in the morning to workout because I wasn't tired. And then my whole evening is free to do whatever. If you have problems falling asleep, going to bed earlier will give you that extra time to lay awake in bed waiting to fall asleep, so in the end you're still getting a full night's worth of sleep, you're just adding on prep time to fall asleep. By going to bed at 10pm I have time to cook breakfast every morning and eat it while watching the Today show and wash the dishes. How much time do you have in the morning? Why add stress to your day by starting off each day in a rushed panic? This brings us back to meal planning, since I planned my meals for the week my lunch for work is already packed and in the fridge.

Back to the list, don't give yourself too many items to put on it, just a manageable amount of tasks and do the hardest item first because completing that first will give you the most amount of accomplishment. For instance last Saturday I opened itunes and lost all of my music and playlists. You can imagine how frustrating that was! I already had 10 things on my to do list for that day and the last thing I wanted to do was waste time on a complicated computer issue but really I can't function without my music so I tackled that task first and an hour later I had a huge sigh of relief when I solved that problem! Just the act of crossing it off my list created a sense of accomplishment for me. Sometimes I'll add things I did already to my list just so I can cross it off! Do you do that too? lol

Success is all about doing the right actions consistently, so with a to do list you will accomplish more on a daily basis leading you to your ultimate goal. Making excuses that you don't have time to exercise or eat healthy will only keep you in the same place you are now, but I'm sure you make time for plenty other things less important than your health. Listen once you figure out what you want out of life and lay down the steps to achieve it, you can stop saying I'll start “someday”. Someday is today, and today you are going to lay down the ground work to achieve your goals! Craig Holiday always says “there’s only 7 days to the week, and none of them are named someday”, so what day are you starting?

What I want you to get out of this if nothing else is time management will lead to success in any area of your life. Think of the to-do list as a way to simplify your life! And it just takes a few minutes a day to organize your day and life. Whether your goal is to lose weight, be a professional makeup artist, be a magazine writer, start your own computer business, you need a to create a to do list to keep you on target to reach your goals. So if you want to challenge yourself to transform your life, start your list of what your first steps need to be (refer to my list up top) then make it a habit to keep up with your list.